


Let Me Drive My Van Into Your Heart

by KatenissEverdeen



Category: Mystery Science Theater 3000
Genre: Awkward Boners, F/M, Friendly Enemies, Light Bondage, Morning After, Oral Sex, awkward dinners, getting your partner's name wrong during sex, lack of respect for Mike's personal belongings, robots eating breakfast
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2017-06-26
Packaged: 2018-08-08 14:40:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7761853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KatenissEverdeen/pseuds/KatenissEverdeen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pearl finds a new way to torment Mike, using........... the heart.</p><p>And maybe an iron maiden.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Mike leaned against the wall and stared into space.  Cold, inky, silent, endless, and honestly kind of boring after the first couple of years.  He had seen the past and the future, he had been to other worlds, he had destroyed planets (by accident, but it still counted), he had been transformed into a being of pure energy, and yet sometimes he just wanted some freaking fast food.  Fast food was good.  He had never much enjoyed it on earth, but after being trapped in space for a while, he’d sell one of his testicles for the chance for an underpaid teenager to hand him a greasy slab of meat.  He usually wasn’t this melancholy about earth, but it had been a long day, and the robots were finally on their rest cycles, and he was alone.  Him and the quiet hum of the ship and space.  He was about to see if he could make some sort of lunch meat potato chip sandwich to try and approximate a fast food hamburger when he saw the call from Castle Forrester.

It was Pearl, and Mike found himself unconsciously standing up a bit straighter.

“Hey Nelson, I couldn’t sleep, and as much as it pains me to talk to you at any hour of the day, you’re probably the best chance for conversation I have.”

“I couldn’t sleep either, that’s why I’m up at-” he checked his watch- “1:27 in the morning.”“Oh, great, I was planning on waking you up and making you miserable, but since you’re already up, I can’t!”  She looked genuinely upset.

“Well, Pearl, you could still make me miserable, you know.  You already do it occasionally what with the movies and all.”  She perked up.

“Do I really?  I mean, I hand pick them to be the worst of the worst, they’re specifically chosen to be as painful as possible, and I just want you to be unhappy!”

“No, no!  I’m really unhappy when you send me movies--you make me unhappy just with your presence, sometimes!”

 “Miiiiike!  You really don’t know how much that means to me.”  She leaned against an iron maiden resting on two cinder blocks she was using as a table.

“And are those new earrings?”  Pearl reached up and touched one of them-small gold skulls.

“No, they were a present from my fourth husband, Tim.  He was nice… I was almost sad when I had to kill him.  Almost.”  There was a pregnant pause.  It was a very pregnant pause.  It was so pregnant it had ceased to be a pregnant pause and gone into labor.

“Wow...” Mike began. Sympathy, he had found, was the easiest way to keep a conversation with Pearl going well.  “That must have been really hard on you.”

“Not really.  I was excited to test out a new poison I had found.  I would have tried it on Clayton, but it’s easier to get a new husband than a new son, which is absolute bullshit.”  She picked up a mug of tea previously hidden by the edge of the camera.  “Say, Mike, what are you doing next… Thursday?”

“Thursday?  Not much, I suppose.  I mean, I was going to write out the next chapter of the great American novel, but I could move that.  Why?”

“Well, I was just thinking… this is all a bit too indirect for my tastes.  I send you a movie, you writhe in pain but refuse to break, we make a few quips, we have fun, but I prefer a more hands-on evil.  Why don’t you come on down to the castle and I can torment you?  Not in big ways, I’d prefer you intact, but little things, making you step in water with your socks on, cheating at Monopoly and pretending nothing happened, forcing you to play Monopoly, that sort of thing.”

The pregnant pause returned, this time celebrating the arrival of a healthy baby girl.

“Well…”  Mike began.

 “On the other hand, I could just cut off your oxygen or give you a... “ here she picked up the dog-eared, coffee-stained, generally messy satellite owner’s manual.  “A ‘shock to the shammies,’ as it says here.  I’m fairly certain I know what part of your anatomy the shammies are, but it could really be anything, and I don’t think that would be a fun thing to be surprised by!  Well, it wouldn’t be fun for you, would it, Mike?”  She hissed out the last word with all the hatred you could conceivably stuff into a proper noun.

“Torture sounds great!” Mike said, suddenly thrilled with the prospect.  “I’ll come on down and play Monopoly and step in water and be miserable.”

“Sounds great.  See you Thursday, around… 6?  6 sounds good to me.  See you then, Nelson!”  

With that, the screen turned black.  Mike stared at it for a moment before turning and heading towards his bedroom.  He needed to sleep for roughly a week.

Mike woke up the next morning with the strange feeling that he forgot something important.  It took him a split second to remember his conversation with Pearl, a feeling roughly equivalent to accidentally touching something sticky and having to look to see what it was.  He had to break the news to the bots.  He got out of bed, pulled on some clothes, and went to the door to find a note in purple glitter pen--”Mike, sorry to hear about your evening with Pearl.  We can hold down the fort until you get back!”  It was signed “Gypsy” in a large, flowy script, with “Cambot” printed out below it in neat letters.  Mike was more surprised than he should have been--Cambot clearly saw his conversation, and Gypsy was practically omniscient as to what was happening at any given moment on the ship.  He went to the kitchen to find Crow and Tom eating breakfast.  How the robots managed to eat was beyond Mike, but he accepted it.  At the moment, Crow’s beak was deep into his bowl of cereal--Mike had stopped checking the boxes and was only aware that it was neon and sugary.  Tom had decided to be a starving French artist, and as such, was scarfing crepes--but in a miserable fashion.

“Hey, Crow, Servo,” he began, sitting down with a cup of coffee, trying to affect that “cool, approachable dad” attitude.  “What’s going on?”  
Crow looked up, bits of neon processed grain product and milk still clinging to his beak.

“Breakfast is what’s going on, Mike.  I thought you could appreciate that.”

“Well, I can, I’ve always been partial to breakfast foods myself.  I’m kind of a bacon man, especially if you make the bacon just right and… hey, wait, I’ve got to talk to you.”  

Tom stopped feeling the ennui and pointlessness of life to answer “Sure, go on.  We promise not to judge you.”

“I need to-”

"Wow.  Really?  You _need_ to, Mike?  Sounds awful selfish to me.”

“Would you let me finish?”  Mike sighed and kept going, plowing through his speech like a snowmobile in the desert.  “Pearl is making me go to down to the castle soon, but just for one evening, okay?  I’ll be back as soon as I can.”  Now for the unpredictable part.  He knew the ‘bots had some issues with the thought of Mike leaving the them, and he waited for their response.

“Okay.” Said Crow, plunging headfirst into his bowl of radioactive milk sludge.  

“Yeah, Mike, Gypsy told us ages ago.  Get with the program!”  Tom added.

“Wait, okay?  I thought you would be worried about me trying to escape!  I mean, I wouldn’t without you guys, but I thought you would be worried!”

Crow snorted into his bowl, and Mike somehow knew that Tom was rolling his eyes, despite the fact that he had none.

 “Mike, you’re going to be with Pearl.  There’s no chance of you escaping.”

The week passed quickly, and finally the dreaded Thursday came.  Mike had thrown on his nice jumpsuit (the one without a little hole in the armpit) and a fresh t-shirt and was drinking a cup of coffee in the kitchen, mostly to steady his nerves.  He heard some sort of crashing coming from down the hall, and ran out to see what it was. Were they worried about him leaving and hiding it under a layer of sarcasm?  Had they made something for him, to wish him well?  He ran out to find them squabbling over a pile of objects.

“I want the frisbee!” 

“Tom, your arms don’t work!”

“What would you know about it, Gypsy?  You don't have any arms!”

Mike ran up to the robot squabble pile and started waving his arms.  “Hey, guys, calm down, what are you--hey, is that my frisbee?”  Silence reigned for maybe half a second, then Crow piped up “Well, yes, technically, but what if, you know, something happens to you down there what with Pearl and all and you can’t come back for your stuff ‘cause you’re dead?”

“Guys, I’m not going to die.”

Another pause.

"Was this just an excuse to get my stuff?”  He looked around at the four little piles, all of which looked like they had been stolen from.  “Is that a chess set?  I didn’t know we had one.”  

“Cambot wanted it, but I said he couldn’t have it.  No telling where those little guys had been!”  Tom added.

“What?  No, I don’t put--Cambot, keep the chess set, it’s fine.”  He stood up, trying to be stern and intimidating and failing miserably.  “Guys, this is just going to be one night.  I’m going down, Pearl’s going to do whatever kind of weird torture she wants, I’ll come back up, it’ll all be fine.”

“Is Pearl going to be our new stepdad?” Crow asked.

“What?  No!  What makes you think that?”

“Well, this is a date, isn’t it?”  Gypsy asked.  

“What?”  The thought of a date had never even crossed Mike’s mind.  The thought of a date had never seen Mike’s mind.  The thought of a date wasn’t even on the same planet as Mike’s mind.  “No, it’s not.  And I think it’s almost time to go.  To see Pearl.  Not on a date--hey, what’s that?” he asked, pointing to a large, off-white box.

“Oh, that’s the good china,” Servo said.  “I thought I could take it anyway, since you might still die.”

Mike almost asked where the good china had come from, but decided against it.  He checked his watch absentmindedly and saw that he had about two minutes to go.  Crap.  He started to run.

When he arrived and slammed his hand on the blinking yellow light, Pearl looked like someone who had given a capybara a calculus test and seen him write a random number--impressed, but given the low standards, almost anything would have impressed them.  Bobo and Brain Guy flanked her, trying to look menacing, and it worked on Mike tonight better than it normally would.  In all the rush and fine china and not-a-date arguments, he had almost forgotten the true meaning of this evening: an inescapable evening with Pearl Forrester.

“Nelson!  Good to see you finally show up.  Gothy, bring him down.”  
And with a soft pop, Mike was in Castle Forrester.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There were no other fics for this pairing so I just had to write one myself.
> 
> Eternal thanks to Coranam for the ideas (including the stepdad line) and encouraging words!


	2. Chapter 2

It wasn’t that being poofed down to earth felt bad, or even weird, it was just… unsettling. One minute, Mike was looking at the wall of the Satellite, which was at least familiar, and the next he was looking at a brick wall, aware of Pearl’s presence right behind him. Well, less “right behind him” and more “vaguely in the area behind him,” as she was shooing Bobo and Brain Guy out of the room.

Mike barely had time to process that this would be a one-on-one torture session and went straight into wondering if this was better or worse for him. He steeled himself to face his fate, and by “his fate” he meant “Pearl.” He turned around slowly, just in time to see Pearl slam the heavy studded metal door. That didn’t seem to be a good sign for the rest of the evening.  He felt one begloved hand elaborately come to rest on his shoulder. She spun him around to the corner, where a small, round table was waiting. It was covered by a cloth that had once been white, but was now more of a musty stained brown--some of the stains looked like blood, and the ends curled up in a way that made Mike suspect it had once been a fitted sheet. There was a single candle on the table, giving off a strong scent of strawberries and what could only be described as “old lady perfume”. There was a matchbook with a logo for “Slick Johnny’s Casino” on it, and a burnt match smoldering on the tablecloth/fitted sheet. Either side had a small silver dome on it, like the one you’d find at a fancy restaurant covering minuscule portions of expensive food. Mike was slowly coming to the realization that Gypsy was not right about everything, but she was right about most things, and she had been right about this. This was starting to look like a date. To be fair, if someone was holding you captive and forcing you to watch bad movies, then a date with that person probably counted as torture.

“Have a seat,” Pearl hissed, managing to force more menace into those three words than most people could get into an entire evil rant. Mike started towards what seemed to be a perfectly normal chair before Pearl gently nudged him away from it in a distinctly violent way. “Not that one, I’m sitting in that one,” she said, and pointed him to an old ratty lawn chair on the other side. He awkwardly took a seat, sitting on the edge so as not to fall through the massive hole in the chair. Pearl whipped off the two bowls to reveal two small glass dishes, both filled with a smooth, off-white substance.

“Pudding,” she said as she sat down.

Mike began to realize the amount of crap he was in--this wasn’t just torture, this was Pearl messing with him, and Mike Nelson was an easy man to mess with. He would be lucky to escape the night in one piece. He picked up the plastic fork (that looked like it had already been through the dishwasher a few times,) and tried to pick up a little of the pudding. Maybe he buy some time with conversation.

“So, Pearl, did you make this yourself?”

“Nah, I had Brain Guy whip some up. I may have… modified yours a little. Eat it, before it gets warm!”

Mike was already not looking forward to this, but this made him even more nervous. What could she have done to it? Best to distract her with something more unpleasant than whatever was in the glass. He waited until she had a spoonful of pudding in her mouth before he asked her for maximum shock.

“Is this a date?”

Her snort was so sarcastic and derisive that the very concepts of sarcasm and derisiveness felt a pain in their souls.

“What? A date? No way, Nelson, I don’t mix business and mad science. This is torture, dammit, and if you don’t eat that pudding, I’ll be forced to use my little friend.” At this she pulled her massive purse onto the table and rummaged around in it for a few moments. She pulled out a small, black and yellow object that looked almost like a ray gun. “I would be upset if you didn’t eat that, but Mr. Taser here would be downright furious!” Mike slowly put the plastic fork inside his mouth. The pudding was actually decent. He knew not to trust Pearl, and yet--it tasted like a perfectly normal cup of tapioca pudding. He hadn’t had tapioca in a long time, and he went back for a second bite-still small, since he was eating it with a fork, but it wasn’t any worse. Pearl seemed satisfied and the two of them ate in relative silence, Mike’s free hand politely on his lap and Pearl’s holding Mr. Taser. For a brief moment, Mike could pretend this was just the worst blind date he had ever been on, that he was in a normal (if dark and musty) restaurant on Earth, and that at the end of the night he could “accidentally” destroy her number and forget it had ever happened. It was a weird moment, and he was glad when it passed.

“Did you like it, Mike?” his self-proclaimed nemesis asked, and he looked down to see he had eaten a good deal.

“It was pretty good tapioca, honestly,” he said, knowing that whatever happened next couldn’t possibly be positive for him.

“Good. It was actually vanilla.”

Mike felt himself internally scream so loud it became an outward scream, and Pearl smiled.

The rest of the night went no better, from the actual dinner (hamburgers--Mike’s seemed fine, until Pearl put her cigarette out on the bun and he had to eat around the burnt part) to the post-dinner music (recordings of amateur performance art) to the dessert (perfectly normal chocolate cake--Mike spent the whole time deathly afraid of what could be wrong about it, and Pearl never told him, which made it worse.) When it was all over, Pearl pulled out a bottle of wine and poured two glasses.

“So what’s up with the wine?” Mike asked, bracing himself for the worst.

“Nothing, it’s just cheap crap.” And with that, she slugged it back like she had just drank poison and the wine was the antidote.

They finished off the bottle of wine, and Mike felt the placebo effect beginning to take hold. He could hold his liquor decently, but he was nervous anyway, if only for the fact he hadn’t had any alcohol in about six years. When it was over, Pearl grabbed another bottle from under the table and poured herself a wine glass full of whiskey.

“So is this part of the torture, too, or…”

“What? Oh, yeah, yeah, it’s torture because… I’m drinking this good whiskey… and you can’t have any of it. Yeah.”

She was enjoying her drink so much Mike was able to grab a swig from the bottle. It seemed like they had arrived at the end of what they knew--their relationship had always been a pretty basic mad scientist/test subject one, but here they were after having dinner together. So now what? Pearl seemed to know, as she pulled out a six pack of beer.

“Hey Nelson, crack one before I change my mind.”

He grabbed the bottle like it was a lifeline. If the night had been going this smoothly, something awful would probably happen later, and he wanted a little booze before that happened.

“This is good,” he said, trying desperately to start a conversation.

She nodded slightly, killing his attempt immediately. Mike nursed his beer, trying to make the moment go on. It was honestly kind of nice--a weirdly quiet moment in a relationship that had ranged from “mildly unpleasant” to “it’s only our physical distance that keeps real harm from happening.” Eventually, she broke the silence.

“So, Mike, how did you get here?”

“Well, you asked me to come to Earth, and--”

“Not that way! I mean, how did you get to the point where you’re you, Nelson? Something must have made you the way you are today! What I’m saying is I despise you, and I want to know how that happened.”

Mike decided to make the risky move to try and win some sympathy again. He could only think of cliches, but they might be his best option. Either that or his better judgement had been left somewhere near the whiskey.

“Well, sometimes I worry that my parents never really loved me.”

“It’s okay, I never really loved my son, either.”

Well, that didn’t work.

“Pearl, look, I’m not sure what the answer to your question is, but I--”

“Hey, Nelson?”

“Yeah?”

“Shut up.”

She leaned forward--so close Mike’s eyes nearly crossed. He felt dangerously off balance, and his breathing was shallow.  Pearl brought her foot down on his as hard as she could, and her combat boots were a good deal harder than his sneakers.

“What, did you think I was going to be nice to you? I still hate you, space man.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to being the best at proof-reading this marvelous mess (and for the ideas--and lines--she contributed, especially Pearl's line about Dr. F.)
> 
> Thanks also to you, if you read this far! Chapter 3 is coming soon!


	3. Chapter 3

Mike felt like he was finally getting the hang of this evening, mostly because he had drunk just enough alcohol to make him overconfident. He was doing so well he had forgotten one important detail: he had not been in close proximity to any other humans for six years. Being so close to someone else who had body heat and breath and skin and kidneys was intoxicating, and that’s where Mike’s downfall began. He knew that he was sitting next to Pearl Forrester, mad scientist, the woman who had been torturing him for years, and most certainly not someone he had ever thought of in a romantic or sexual way. Mike knew this. Mikey the Mike Sprite, however, did not. He felt his pants tighten slightly, and took only a moment to be shocked before crossing his legs and thinking about the cornfields of Wisconsin. The long, endless, massively boring fields.

The fields where he had driven out with Sherri Lund after their date at the Skatin’ Place roller rink…

Oh god, no.

He leaned forward in his seat a little and tried to act normal. Between his paralyzing fear and his weird position, it was wholly unnerving.

“What the hell are you doing?” Pearl asked, in a tone of voice that sounded impressively exhausted with Mike’s antics.

“Just trying to have a fun, normal time with a… person I know,” he said, unwilling to bring out the heavy-duty commitment of “acquaintance.”

“Well, that’s weird.” She stood up and waited for Mike to follow her. And waited. And waited. “Oh my god, Nelson, stand up! How stupid ar--” He hesitated just long enough for her to figure out what was going on.  Pearl’s face lit up like Christmas came early and all Santa left was a dead battery and a “Best of Pat Boone” tape.

“Pearl, listen, this is not what it looks like--” She pulled the table away from him to prove that it was exactly what it looked like.

“That’s disgusting! That’s awful! That’s…” She seemed to be lost in thought. “That’s something I haven’t done in a while,” she muttered under her breath. She grabbed Mike by the collar of his jumpsuit and yanked him to his feet, pulling him out the door.

He had realized what was going to happen before he could fully react to it, almost leaving his brain in the room they had left. Pearl sped down hallways, up staircases and past booby traps, opening a door here and disarming a tank of mustard gas there. The movement was not helping his average size (he refused to call it little) problem and he had started to realize that he was okay with this. More than okay--he was looking forward to it! It had definitely been a while, and out of all the people in his life at the moment, Pearl was, amazingly, the best option. When she opened a door, pulled him inside, and stopped, he realized they had reached the end of their journey. Pearl’s room was large and elaborate--four-poster bed, fancy vanity table, and a Medieval rack in the corner he hoped wouldn’t come into play. Pearl let go of Mike before rummaging through a drawer.

“Shoes off before you get on the bed. House rules.”  He slipped his sneakers and socks off just in time for her to turn around with what he hoped was a fake skull with the top removed. She placed it gently on the side table before yanking her boots off. He peeked inside the skull to see a handful of condoms and a bottle of lube.  Mike unzipped his jumpsuit and sat on the bed, amazed at how his nerves were gone by this point. Here he was, about to have sex with someone who probably wanted him dead, and he was okay with it--more than okay, he was excited! Pearl sat down next to him and pushed him up, pulling the rest of his jumpsuit off, leaving him in a pair of decent-looking boxer briefs. She quirked an eyebrow and pulled him onto the bed, flipping him on his back.

For one long moment, Mike and Pearl stared at each other, united in the awful fact that both of them were ready to have sex for the first time in a while but neither of them was quite sure how to begin. Eventually Pearl leaned forward and bit Mike’s ear--not quite a gentle, sexy nibble, it was more like she was ready to rip it off.

“Ow!”

“Oh, deal with it.”

Then she leaned forward and shut him up by viciously attacking his lips. With hers.  Making out--Mike could handle that. He tried to slip his tongue in, he remembered that much, but she shoved his back into his mouth before gnawing at his lip like she was a death row inmate and it was her last meal. He shifted slightly, trying to sit up, until she grabbed his wrists and pinned them down over his head.

As it turned out, he enjoyed being restrained. He stared at the ceiling for a brief moment, letting this new knowledge wash over him. It washed over every part of him, as Pearl soon found out.

“Wait, are you getting off on me holding you down?”

“Yes? No? Maybe? I think? I’m not sure, this is all new to me.”

She smiled, and for a moment he thought he could see a shred of warmth in it. Then her smile was gone, replaced by the crazed look of someone who craves power being given a heaping helping of it. She rocked towards him, breathing into his neck and sending shivers down his spine. He was so distracted he didn’t notice her arm moving towards the bedside table and grabbing something, nor did he notice the soft, slightly-metallic sounds. He didn’t really notice anything other than the way Pearl was moving from breathing into his neck to gently biting his neck until--

Click.

“Pearl?”

“Yeah?”

“Did you just… handcuff me to the bed?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Okay.”

He was starting to get nervous, not because of the (fuzzy, leopard print) handcuffs. This may have been the strangest thing he had ever done in bed, but certainly not the strangest thing he had ever done. No, he was nervous because of his lack of recent experience. Not that he was constantly doing it before being sent to space, but he had at least had some amount of the amorous polka before. He was coming off the most massive dry spell imaginable. Of course he had made the one gun salute, but that didn’t involve another person, much less Pearl, a woman he was fairly certain would kill him if given a sock full of pennies and 5 minutes. At least he was in well-tread waters. The handcuffs were the only unfamiliar thing about this. He snapped out of his train of thought to hear her pants hit the floor, followed closely by her underwear before placing herself over his face.

“Go to town, Nelstone.”

Well, this was a curveball.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not going to heaven.
> 
> And now you aren't, either.
> 
> Thanks again to Coranam for being the most amazing beta, and for keeping me going when I was nervous about writing this, much less uploading it.
> 
> Chapter 4 coming soon!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not going to heaven.

Mike inhaled the unfamiliar scent of Pearl’s… for lack of a better word, clam, and opened his mouth slowly. He had never done this before, only heard rumors about how to do it in high school--something about tracing out the letters of the alphabet with your tongue? Right as he was about to start, Pearl lifted herself onto her knees and reached over to the hollowed out skull, rummaging around before pulling out a rectangular plastic packet, only slightly larger than one of the condoms. She ripped it open and pulled out a soft sheet of off-white latex, then casually tossed it onto Mike’s face. He tried to move it, before remembering that his hands were (quite literally) tied. Pearl straddled Mike’s face again and held the sheet between his mouth and her vulva.

“Safety first, Mark. I don’t know where you’ve been.”

He rolled his eyes, confident that she would interpret it as a sarcastic remark, and held out his tongue. Oh sweet lord, please let this work. He laboriously slid his tongue up at a diagonal, down in the opposite direction, then across, forming an A shape. He tasted strawberries, very faintly, on the plastic, slightly offset by musk. It was Pearl’s turn to roll her eyes now.

“Come on, I won’t break! Go a little harder.”

He traced out a rough approximation of a B, pressing harder, and was rewarded by a soft sigh. He was honestly kind of amazed--he had never heard Pearl sigh in his life. He wasn’t even sure her vocal cords would allow that to happen, but apparently she had the physical capacity to sigh. Mike was learning all sorts of things tonight. Newly emboldened by this revelation, he dove back into his task with newfound ardor, eating the pussy like he was dying and it would save his life. Pearl skipped the sigh this time and went into a full-fledged moan, tangling her fingers in Mike’s hair and giving it a soft tug. He felt himself jerk slightly, surprised at how good it felt, and unconsciously hummed in the back of his throat, which made Pearl yank on his hair harder. Eventually, he worked his way up to her clitoris, and started gently sucking--which only earned him a gentle slap on the side.

“Harder,” she hissed, and he graciously obliged. There was a part of him saying that his hands were going to fall asleep, that the handcuffs would leave harsh red marks on his wrists, that he hadn’t packed a change of clothes and was going to have to do the world’s most unique walk of shame--but there was another part of him saying to forget all of that and bring Pearl Forrester to climax. He switched between sucking and biting--very gently, with his lips in front of his teeth--and he soon heard her cries grow more frequent and shrill, before something wet and musky was suddenly on the other side of the dental dam and Pearl was relaxing. She took almost no time at all before sliding off his face, leaving him taking deep gasps of air and almost sputtering, before she reached down to grab his penis. He finished incredibly quickly, which wasn’t saying much for a man with no privacy or skin-to-skin contact for the past six years. He lay on the bed next to Pearl, who had the presence of mind to unlock the handcuffs. Mike was carrying out the incredibly cliche move of rubbing his suddenly free wrists when Pearl reached over, grabbed his hand in a way that was almost tender (if only because it wasn’t as harsh as possible) and pulled his hand downwards.

“Pearl, what--”

“You have been with a woman before, right? I’m just getting started.”

Much, much, later, Mike was completely spent. Pearl had proved that she was just getting started, and Mike managed to finish what she started at least twice (for himself--he had lost track of how much she had come.) The two humanoids stared at the ceiling side by side, secluded for a moment from the way they knew each other normally--as enemies. Had they become friends tonight? No. Definitely no. They were still mortal foes, but now they had another dimension--they had become enemies with benefits.

“Mike?” Pearl breathed out, finally exhausted.

“Yeah?” Mike whispered, sure he had broken some important part of his body.

“There was nothing wrong with the chocolate cake.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Much thanks again to Coranam, who helped so much with making this decent (as decent as this could be, at least) and for encouraging me to actually post it. The next chapter won't take as long to post, since the holidays are over. Thanks again for reading!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last one, guys!
> 
> Thank you so much for staying with me on this strange journey. This is not the last you'll hear from me, trust me.

Mike woke up sweaty, in an uncomfortable position, and with the vague feeling he had done something significant. It wasn’t the first time he had woken up with these sensations, and it wouldn’t be the last, but this one stood out for how long it took him to reassemble what had happened. He was in a bed, staring at a ceiling that seemed to be from an old horror film set in a castle. He started to remember--Pearl had brought him down to earth, and they had dinner, which was both horrific and took place in said castle. Then they had… 

He turned slightly to his side to see Pearl, stretched out and taking up way more than half of the bed in what was clearly a deliberate manner. She had apparently thrown on pyjamas sometime last night after what Mike was already starting to mentally refer to as “The Event,” and was wearing an oversized tank top with a picture of a Garfield and the phrase “I’ll rise, but I won’t shine” on it. She was breathing softly--and suddenly Mike was reminded of last night, and Pearl, and Pearl, topless, and--

He had never had good judgement, and he had to know that this was real. He reached over and gently laid a hand on, for lack of a better term, Pearl’s bosom.

She woke up immediately, of course, grabbing his wrist in a move so fast and vicious that a king cobra would have been impressed. She tightened her grip, and Mike tried to look a little more innocent and a lot less scared than he actually felt.

“Good morning, Pearl,” he said, trying to lighten the mood. “Sleep well?” She gave him a smile that could only be considered threatening and quirked an eyebrow. 

“I was sleeping well until you woke me up,” she said, still clearly half-asleep. “Now give me a little longer and it will be a good morning.” With that, she closed her eyes, sprawled out over the bed again, and lowered Mike’s hand onto her chest. Within seconds she was snoring loudly, almost so loudly it sounded fake. Nothing real could sound that fake. Mike was certain she was asleep. 

He thought about solid ground and a sky not choked with stars and fast food and the police and coming back for the bots, and he stood up and slowly, carefully, went for the door, feeling strangely like he was back in high school and sneaking back into his house after a night of trying (and failing) to tip cows with Bardo Stevenson and Neil Lindgren. He made his way across the room, avoiding the pile of clothes, grabbing his shoes and socks that he had tossed on the ground the night before, eyeing the Medieval rack suspiciously… 

He reached the door and, taking a slow breath (but a very quiet one) opened it.  
He was nose to nose with Bobo. Mike stared at the mountain gorilla for a few molasses-slow seconds before closing the door, walking back to bed, placing his shoes on the ground, and waiting for Pearl to wake back up.

When she did wake up, Mike had his shoes back on and was sitting in a chair, studiously trying not to look at whatever it was Pearl kept in her room. She stared at him before shuffling out of bed. 

“I’ve done this before, you know. I’m supposed to give you breakfast.” She rummaged around in her purse, pulled a half-squished Big Texas cinnamon roll out and lobbed it at Mike. She pulled a second, less squished, one out, unwrapped it, and began to eat.

“What about you? Is this your first road gig?”

Mike shook his head, trying to choke down a cinnamon roll so stale and dry that it seemed to actively suck the moisture out of his mouth. “I’ve had a few, yeah,” he said around the tiny piece of the Sahara Desert currently clogging up his windpipe. He was so focused on trying to swallow the “food” that he almost forgot to be offended that Pearl had asked him if he had ever had a one night stand before. He tried to see if there was enough moisture left in his frail human body to speak and when there miraculously was, he let out a dry, arid “Hey!”

Pearl raised an eyebrow and continued eating her cinnamon roll like nothing was wrong. “Just wondering, Nelson. You’re kind of a loser. Can’t really imagine you in a situation,” she gestured vaguely around her room “like this.”

“Well, maybe you’ve only seen me in a bad situation. Maybe I’m more than I seem. Maybe I’m a real person who had a real life before all this happened, and maybe I could have a real life on Earth again,” Mike replied.

She thought this over. “You make a point, Nelson. And that point stinks.” She slammed her fist on the door a few times. “SEND HIM BACK, BRANIAC!”

Mike never felt anything when he was being sent somewhere by Brain Guy, which made him feel like there should be a drop in his stomach, or at least something. He recovered from the anticlimax to see that the room was dark. He barely had time to ponder this before the lights clicked on and he saw four figures sitting on a couch. The bots had somehow moved a couch in.

Crow intertwined his fingers as well as he could. 

“So, MIKE,” he said, injecting the personal noun with all the gleeful venom in his skinny robot body.

“Have fun last night?” Gypsy asked, wry sarcasm seeped into every syllable. Cambot beeped in what could only be considered a chiding way. Tom flew right into Mike’s face and hovered there, sending him a remarkably good death glare for someone with no eyes. “Mike Nelson, we were up waiting hours--HOURS!--for you, and you didn’t come home!”

“You could have crashed your car!” Crow yelled.

“All the kids nowadays drive so fast,” added Gypsy. 

Mike took a deep breath and gave his best winning smile (which usually veered into a menacing and deeply unfun grimace, but he considered it worth a shot) and said “Hey, I’m sorry, okay? Next time I’ll be back by curfew.”

Cambot beeped out the clearest “You better!” that has ever been beeped by a robot.

“How about this?” Mike ventured. “I’ll make us some breakfast to make up for it--” the bots instinctively flinched. “Okay, I’ll let you make whatever you want and I can set the table?” Crow and Cambot were already halfway to the kitchen. Tom left a bit slowly, muttering something about Mike’s big meaty man hands and how he could burn ice if left unsupervised. Gypsy stayed behind for a moment.

“Hey, Mike?”

“Yeah, Gyps?”

“How about I never ask you what happened last night, and you never tell me, and we never bring this up again.”

“Sounds good to me.”

And with that she left the room, eager for whatever gourmet vegan frittata Tom was about to attempt to make. Mike was about to leave, too, until he noticed a slip of paper--it looked to be torn from a pad of paper from a Day’s Inn in Duluth. On it, in broad, angry letters, Pearl had scrawled “Until next time, Nelson.” Was there going to be a next time? If so… he could live with that. Time for some vegan frittata.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to thank Coranam, for being the best beta reader I could wish for (and for telling me to get off my ass and actually write this damn thing.) I would also like to thank everyone who read and/or left kudos or a like--I'm so glad that I could write something people enjoyed! I really do love this fandom, and I'm honored to have made some contribution to it, even if that was me indulging my rare pair.
> 
> I feel like I should end this in traditional bad movie fashion and in a way that shows that I have plans for a sequel. So...
> 
> THE END...?


End file.
